CONSTANTINOPLE NOTES ON THE TRANSITION TO MAN NUMBER 4 by Ferapontoff, Boris - 2017

Beech Hill, 2017. Second edition, with a new Preface. Paperback in very good condition.. Commentary by Joseph Azize; 231 pages. Boris Ferapontoff was a pupil of Gurdjieff in Russia, in Constantinople, and was again with him at the Prieuré.

From the Introduction by Joseph Azize: What is the material? I think that much of it may be based on lectures Ouspensky gave in Turkey. Some of it seems to me to be pure Gurdjieff, although Ouspensky could quote Gurdjieff directly, so one cannot be dogmatic. Various ideas in these notes, e.g., those concerning karma, were never referred to by Ouspensky in In Search of the Miraculous, Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution, New Model of the Universe, or in any of his reported questions and answers. That makes me think that these notes are unlikely to be Ouspensky's words alone, because had Ouspensky ever expressed these powerful ideas, why would he apparently discard them, especially as he stated that he aimed to pass on the system as he had received it and as a whole? Also, one of the comments about the Absolute (not in this selection) makes the Absolute sound like God, and Ouspensky repudiated that suggestion. If the sound of Gurdjieff comes through loud and clear in this extract, it's in the pithy comment about "perspicacity.